The Museum of Broken Promises Read online

  ‘Good,’ May looked up. ‘I’m beginning to see you.’ The uncertain expression was gone – a reminder to Laure to be careful. ‘Are we getting somewhere?’

  ‘You make it sound like a psychotherapy session. It’s not. This is an interview, nothing more.’

  May checked the recording device. ‘Is it lonely being the curator?’

  Tomas, Milos, all of them, had warned Laure to keep her mouth shut. To ask questions was to invite suspicion, they said, let alone answering them. Be stupid, always be stupid. Once learned as a survival strategy, it had stayed with Laure.

  May raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it? ‘Being spied on is like having your skin peeled away,’ she had once observed to Tomas.

  He had taken her in his arms, stroked her hair and said, ‘Never get used to it. Otherwise we’re dead.’

  ‘Being head of anything is lonely,’ Laure replied. ‘It’s the nature of the beast.’

  Sometimes Laure imagined her experiences were stamped on her exterior – like a birthmark, or a scar from an old injury. As for her interior? The scars went deep there: cutting down into her mind and thoughts.

  ‘What’s the point of the museum?’ May settled back into her seat. ‘You can take as long as you like.’

  It was now well past lunchtime. ‘I’ll get us something to eat,’ Laure said. ‘Then we can discuss.’

  From the fridge, she took out some slices of melon and Parma ham and arranged them on two plates. ‘It’s not much,’ she said, emerging from the kitchen, a plate in each hand, and came to a dead halt. ‘What are you doing?’

  May was over by the table under the window where she appeared to be taking photos of the papers piled on it.

  Laure set the plates down. ‘May?’

  She swung round and coloured up. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I was taking a photo of your picture. It’s so beautiful with the sea and the driftwood.’ She pointed unconvincingly to the framed photograph of a beach in the west of Scotland littered with rocks and driftwood on the wall above the table.

  Laure’s rage sprang into life – and it was almost pleasurable, as if she had given herself permission to let go. ‘No, you weren’t.’ She made to grab the phone, but May stepped to one side and shielded it against her chest.

  ‘You were snooping.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said May.

  What did Laure expect? Her guard had been lowered, which had been unwise. May could never be anything else but someone who was doing her job.

  ‘I thought I would learn something about you.’ May tightened her grip on her phone. ‘You’re very difficult to get through to.’

  ‘And what makes you think you have the right to do what you have just done?’

  ‘No right.’ Her voice slithered over the words. ‘Only the desire to write truthfully.’

  ‘Get out.’

  May stood her ground. ‘Laure, I’m not a spy.’

  ‘You know nothing about being a spy.’

  Quick as a flash came the retort, ‘And you do?’

  May did not, and could not, know about that universe. The colourless years. The watching, the uncertainty. The voluntary venture into grey, incomplete moral territory from which there was no return. It was an enterprise, sometimes a fearsome one, that left no one unmarked. ‘Give me your phone.’ May flinched at Laure’s tone. ‘Now. And the password.’

  ‘You can’t take my phone.’

  ‘Yes, I can. And I will.’ There was no mistaking Laure’s anger and May handed it over. Laure tapped in the numbers and deleted the photograph of the medical insurance forms that had been on the top of the pile of papers. ‘Were you also snooping when you went to the bathroom?’

  May owned up at once. ‘I looked into the room with the boxes. I’m sorry. But I was fascinated by the labels. “Prague”, “Berlin”. I would love to talk those over with you. I know they’re important in your story?’ She kneaded one hand against the other. ‘I noticed the Czech railway ticket in the frame.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Not that you’ve stolen it.’

  ‘I should bloody think not.’ As the museum’s curator, she had handled worse situations – and this should be no different. ‘You have abused our arrangement.’

  May gnawed an already bitten fingernail and did not move. ‘I apologize, Laure. It was wrong of me. Very.’

  May was clearly panicked. Losing this assignment would not be good for either but May would be the real loser.

  ‘How can you write so acutely and act so stupidly?’

  ‘It has to be done sometimes,’ she said. ‘It’s not good. But it achieves good.’ The uncertain expression was back. ‘By good, I mean clarity.’

  ‘Leave. Now.’

  What a performance May was putting on, she thought. A good theatrical one.

  ‘Go. And don’t come back.’

  ‘The papers were there. You were in the kitchen. I wanted to find out more about you.’ May assembled her defence. ‘If the papers were really important you would not have left them lying around.’

  ‘If you mean I hadn’t anticipated inviting someone without principles or morals into my flat, then no.’

  The grey-blue eyes were now huge rock pools of distress and contrition.

  ‘Please,’ said May, all pretence apparently ripped away. ‘This will be a big feature. It was my idea and I went after it.’ She added in a low voice, ‘I need it.’

  The air in the flat felt stale, despairing. Laure walked across to the window and pushed it further open. She held an advantage. May knew it wasn’t only the killing of the interview that had made her plead for it. Killing the interview meant that May would probably have to say goodbye to Nic.

  She kept her back turned on May. ‘I bloody hope the dos and don’ts of my medical insurance were worth it.’

  ‘Actually, they were very boring.’

  One never got used to being spied on. Never and, almost certainly, May would know nothing of that. There were techniques to combat it and scrutinizing someone from top to toe worked well when it was advisable to disconcert a watcher. Laure turned around and allowed her gaze travel up the long legs, the skinny hips and white lace T-shirt up to the clever, almost beautiful but not quite, features and the mass of fair hair – raking over the combination of the confident and vulnerable that May presented.

  ‘You’re very determined,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘I wonder how much?’ said Laure, more to herself than May. ‘How much is your determination made up of skulduggery?’

  May lifted the hand holding the phone in a gesture of surrender. ‘It’s fine to hate me.’

  ‘Just so there’s no mistake, I repeat that the ticket in the frame belongs to me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Laure handed over May’s phone. May took it, picked up her rucksack and went.

  Kočka got up, stretched and resettled.

  Laure sat down beside her, held out a hand and was annoyed to see that it was shaking.

  It didn’t always happen, thank God, and it had got better as she grew older. But, from time to time, it took only a small invasion of her private world, a rattled-up routine, for her to be back running through the streets, heart frantic beneath her ribcage. Running once again from the grey men and leather-jacketed goons who watched and preyed and pounced.

  Those flashing images had their effect. Countering them was hard, even years later, but she had learnt to force herself to turn her mind around.

  So… it was healing to remember being with Tomas down by the Vltava, almost delirious with happiness. He had drawn her close and she inhaled the aphrodisiacal scent of male sweat and tobacco. He bent over to kiss her and it seemed to Laure that what was flowing through her veins was liquid joy.

  Then her disobedient thoughts swooped down on the old, unanswered nagging questions.

  Did Tomas ever make it to the railway station? Had he ever held his railway ticket to freedom, even for a few seconds? What woul
d have been worse? To reach the train, only to be dragged off? Or never even getting within spitting distance of it?

  She shifted position. Time to concentrate on something else. On Kočka. What was Laure doing taking her on? (Semi-feral. Expensive. Needy.) She touched the fur between Kočka’s ears, absorbing through her fingertip the whisper of eggshell bone beneath it. To take her in, to love Kočka, was to invite vulnerability, possibly distress.

  It would be complicated. Laure had little spare time to deal with Kočka and, unless she killed Madame Poirier (no hardship) and replaced her with a sympathetic concierge, she would be forced to move. Her guarded, compartmentalized routines would be thrown into flux. A small creature’s demands would invade her calm.

  In the morning, it would be simple enough to bundle Kočka into the cardboard carrier, to take her back to the vet and to let them deal with her.

  Kočka stirred, adjusting a paw that sat at an angle, which suggested it had been damaged in the past. Its fragility was unbearable. It made her feel… what? Uncomfortable. Broken.

  May had accused her of being difficult to get through to.

  True. She was observing life through a pane of glass. That was how she wished it. You must not live with ghosts, she told herself. It is time to forget them.

  Laure’s personal history coloured much of her attitude. But not entirely. No one could look at the planet today, riddled as it was with violence, rotten regimes and persecution, and feel good about it.

  The sounds of Paris filtered in through the window.

  Laure gently arranged Kočka’s tail and a familiar ache folded itself over her heart.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, MAY WALKED INTO THE OFFICE and planted herself in front of Laure’s desk. Laure looked up. ‘I don’t wish to talk to you.’

  May looked seriously sleep-deprived. ‘I’m so sorry. Please, will you forgive me?’

  ‘Why on earth would I?’

  She clasped her hands behind her back. ‘You have no reason but I’m asking for another chance.’ Doggedness. ‘Except that I could, and would, do a good job for you.’

  Laure did not reply and there was an unpleasant pause.

  Nic had been in the interview room and put his head around the door. ‘The Maison de G wants to finalize the menu. Can you talk?’ He vanished.

  A lunch to celebrate the collaboration between the museum and the Maison de Grasse had been slated for later in the month, a date carefully chosen so as not to clash with the run-up to Christmas.

  Laure took the call which lasted a few minutes. May hovered, restless and distressed. When the call finished, Laure stood up. ‘Yesterday you asked me about Prague and Berlin.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to understand. They were beautiful places but, when I lived in them, also terrible. Full of unresolved bitterness and fracture. The sort that eats up the soul.’ Her gaze slid from May’s bitten nails to her own statement red ones. ‘I refuse to let Paris be like that.’

  May looked as though she might grab Laure’s hand. ‘I understand. I come from the south. Remember?’

  ‘Don’t ever do anything like that again.’

  There was a dried spot of blood on May’s chewed thumb. ‘I’ll do my best.’ She ran a hand through her hair, smoothing it back into severity. As if, thought Laure, that was going to help. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

  Slice May open and the word ‘contrition’ would apparently run through her like a stick of rock. Laure smothered a smile. ‘Put it this way, I won’t be contacting your mother.’

  May’s mouth twisted. ‘My nickname is Night Bug. It’s not affectionate. I give you permission to call me the same if you want.’

  She sounded calm enough but there was a coded emotion locked into the information and it crossed Laure’s mind that May’s mother did not have a clue how to handle her unusual daughter.

  ‘OK.’ She signalled a resumption of equal relations. ‘Let’s discuss the celebration lunch.’

  May rallied. ‘I hope there will be goodie bags with diamonds and a mountain of flowers. Butterflies?’

  ‘Don’t lose sight of the objective,’ said Laure, drily.

  The phone rang incessantly and Nic was kept busy compiling the list of would-be donors. Mid-morning, Chantal brought up the post and deposited five packages on the table.

  ‘Is this average?’ asked May.

  Laure checked the statistics on screen. ‘Submissions are up again,’ she said. ‘It’s been going up every month.’

  ‘Interesting. Is it because promises are more easily broken? Or are harder to keep?’

  Nic was conducting an animated telephone conversation in French with a man who wished to donate a sack of manure in memory of the wife who had just dumped him, and was having a hard time persuading him it would not be acceptable.

  It was Laure who answered. ‘Partly it’s because people have changed. We’ve become different.’ May shot her a look. ‘Haven’t we now given ourselves permission to admit to betrayal? As a generation, I mean. Admit to our sadness?’

  ‘Really?’ said May. ‘Haven’t humans always given vent? One way or another?’

  ‘Wait till autumn proper.’ Nic finished the call. ‘When summer’s lease has run out then it’ll get worse.’

  At a stroke, the atmosphere lightened.

  May looked from one to the other. ‘Is he always this cheerful?’

  ‘When summer’s lease runs out,’ said Laure, ‘Nic gets worse.’

  The parcels on the desk awaited attention. Laure gestured to May. ‘Do you want to do the honours?’

  The first one contained the board game Diplomacy, and the second a long narrow box which, when opened, revealed a swathe of tissue paper with a copy of a British magazine.

  Laure read aloud from the covering letter.

  Dear Curator, will you accept this for the museum? When you have read the enclosed, I’m sure you’ll agree it deserves to be displayed. I am an ordinary man but I liked to think that I understood people but I was wrong. I hadn’t a clue. These events have left me gob-smacked and I won’t be getting over them in a hurry.

  She peeled back the tissue paper to reveal a bridal veil and continued.

  Having thought about it obsessively, I’ve concluded that I can’t adequately describe my feelings and this will have to do instead.

  In brief, I got married early this year but the marriage only lasted two months. That was bad enough. Worse, is the lack of explanation. Every time I ask my soon-to-be ex-wife what went wrong and why, she refuses to answer me. A couple of weeks ago, a friend showed me this piece that had been published in the magazine. (See sticker.) What has this to do with the breakdown of the marriage? If you read it, it will become clear.

  ‘Can I read it?’ May asked.

  Laure looked down at the veil – foamy white and hopeful-looking. Protecting privacy up to a point, and being kind, was a first principle and, like it or not, May was a predator. Yet, the piece was published and in the public domain.

  ‘Laure, you can trust me.’

  Who fooled who? Yet, mouth set in rueful lines, semi-duplicitous and rash, May could not be dismissed. She was quick, she was intelligent and brave enough to go venturing into the world to make her way. Those were things worth encouraging.

  ‘Correct,’ she replied gently. ‘You’re a journalist who needs a story.’

  ‘Quite right. It’s the eternal battle. How to be human and do my work.’ Her gaze sought out Nic’s. ‘But deep down in my candy-floss soul I do manage to have proper feelings.’ They exchanged a tiny smile.

  Laure pushed the magazine over to May who skimmed through the pages showcasing high fashion, fusion recipes and what was what in retinol creams. She found the article and began to read it out loud.

  This was an office where French and English accents dominated. Her Southern drawl, dropping letters, emphasizing vowels, issued from different linguistic geography hinting of other worlds.

  The v
eil was chosen by Jenna and me. We had talked on the phone for hours over which one to go for and, because I wanted to hear her voice, I spun it out. Why not? I was about to lose her. She was about to vanish into the two-up, two-down life complete with a set of cutlery, place mats and a lawn mower.

  I asked her a question: didn’t she think a veil too old-fashioned and submissive?

  ‘That’s the idea, Rosie.’ She was unbothered and that hurt, too. (Actually, everything in this business hurt.) ‘Ned and I are going to give each other our lives.’ She laughed. ‘Ned’s fed up at the moment, but I tell him that, if we can pass this hurdle, it’ll be plain sailing.’

  When I heard that, I understood the urge to commit murder. I also imagined how, having murdered, one must feel beautifully empty.

  We arranged to meet at the bridal boutique to choose the wretched veil. It was a tiny place, dominated by a rack that stretched from wall to wall onto which were crammed dresses in every shade of white and with every permutation of tuck and ruffle that you could imagine. It was like looking at a shelf of different meringues, some of which it must be said had shed their freshness.

  The assistant laced Jenna into her dress and clicked her tongue. ‘You’ve lost weight.’ She jerked the laces tighter on the bodice. ‘Quite normal.’

  The dress was spectacular. Plain, tight-sleeved, flowing, made from the lightest of tulles, it perfectly suited her colouring and figure.

  She tried on the first veil which turned out to be the wrong white against her skin. The second was too short and perky.

  The assistant threw a third one over her head. ‘There,’ she said.

  Its hem drifted to the floor around the still, white figure and I saw a ghost. Of the past. I saw, too, the future. It wasn’t one I wished to think about.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said the assistant and gave a stupid little clap.

  It was.

  We avoided each other’s gaze. I kept my eyes fixed on the assistant who was poking and prinking away. Jenna pinched a fold of it between her fingers, as if to draw every frisson of sensation from its texture.